Features
The VFA5.2 adapters offer virtualized networking, support a converged infrastructure, and improve
performance with powerful offload engines. The adapter has the following features and benefits.
Reduce complexity
Virtual NIC emulation
The Emulex VFA5.2 supports three NIC virtualization modes right out of the box: Virtual Fabric
mode (vNIC1), switch independent mode (vNIC2), and Unified Fabric Port (UFP). With NIC
virtualization, each of the two physical ports on the adapter can be logically configured to emulate
up to four virtual NIC (vNIC) functions with user-definable bandwidth settings. Additionally, each
physical port can simultaneously support a storage protocol (FCoE or iSCSI).
Common drivers and tools
You can deploy faster and manage less when you use both Virtual Fabric Adapters (VFAs) and Host
Bus Adapters (HBAs) that are developed by Emulex. VFAs and HBAs developed by Emulex use the
same installation and configuration process, streamlining the effort to get your server configured
and running, saving you valuable time. They also use the same Fibre Channel drivers, reducing time
to qualify and manage storage connectivity. With Emulex's OneCommand Manager, you can
manage VFAs and HBAs that are developed by Emulex through the data center from a single
console.
Improved support for Lenovo XClarity
Supports agent-free management, eliminating platform agents to reduce complexity
Supports automatic inventory management to simplify management
Supports real-time monitoring, fault detection and alert handling for a more secure managed
environment
Supports automatic firmware downloads and installation for true bare metal provisioning
Reduce cost
Multiprotocol support for 10 GbE
The Emulex VFA5.2 adapter family offers two 10 Gb Ethernet ports and is cost- and performance-
optimized for integrated and converged infrastructures. The VFA5.2 offers a “triple play” of
converged data, storage, and low-latency RDMA networking on a common Ethernet fabric. The
Emulex VFA provides customers with a flexible storage protocol option for running heterogeneous
workloads on their increasingly converged infrastructures.
Power savings
When compared with previous generation Emulex VFA3 adapters, the Emulex VFA5.2 adapters can
save up to 50 watts per server, reducing energy and cooling OPEX through improved storage
offloads.
Delay purchasing features until you need them with Features on Demand (FoD)
VFA5.2 adapters 00AG570 and 00AG560 use Features on Demand (FoD) software activation
technology. FoD enables the adapter to be initially deployed as a low-cost Ethernet NIC, and then
later upgraded in the field to support FCoE or iSCSI hardware offload.
Improve performance
VXLAN/NVGRE offload technology
Emulex supports Microsoft’s network virtualization using generic routing encapsulation (NVGRE)
and VMware’s virtual extensible LAN (VXLAN). These technologies create more logical LANs (for
traffic isolation) that are needed by cloud architectures. Because these protocols increase the
processing burden on the server’s CPU, the VFA5.2 has an offload engine specifically designed for
processing these tags. The resulting benefit is that cloud providers can leverage the benefits of
VXLAN/NVGRE with no reduction in the server’s performance.
Emulex VFA5.2 Adapter Family for System x
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